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Many, many people have seen 4th Impact singing covers on X Factor UK. Their X Factor UK YouTube videos have all reached into the millions of views, far surpassing any of the other acts. But how many people have heard an original song by this group? Now’s your chance. This is a song they put out before they went to X Factor UK and got discovered by the English speaking world.

Millions have watched the Pinay sister group 4th Power (ages 19, 23, 25, 27) on the British X Factor. Their YouTube performances have all gone viral. They are amazing in their abilities and in their humility. They are also Christian. Take a listen to this great Christian song, as sung by 4th Power.

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All you anti-Christian, anti-Semites, you can kiss my puwet. Tell your lies. They’re from Satan. I stand in solidarity with Israel, the Jews, Jesus, Providence and against Satan, who calls himself Allah among other names.

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Ok. Been awhile. I’ve been busy tilting at metaphysical windmills, in an ongoing and probably futile attempt to get to the core, you know the real crux of the collectivist mindset.

You think after ten years I might have learned that deep down inside, there is no there, there, to their there. After all, they admit as much … as self-proclaimed moral nihilists and eliminative materialists. Leftism: a caravan to nowhere.

Speaking of caravans, and something a bit more positive in the way of one, I went to Youtube the other day to pull up a video wherein Frank Vignola the amazing jazz guitarist had guested with the Hot Club of Detroit jazz group. As I may have mentioned before, when I first saw that particular 90.3 FM WCPN video, I didn’t know who Vignola was, nor of his reputation.

I thought Evan and the Hot Club boys had some local to Cleveland rock band mop top sitting in [far right] as a courtesy gesture. Then I heard Vignola’s lead solo during Nuages. The reaction of the band members tells you all you need to know about Vignola’s musicianship. You might want to listen to the first 40 seconds of the clip which I have started with the lead handover. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7ZIF9f1pO8&feature=player_detailpage#t=315s

So anyway, despite the fact that I don’t much care for – to put it politely – French accordion, I thought I’d take another listen. That’s when I stumbled across a related subject matter video put up by a fellow named Jay Cunningham. He’d attended a luthiers’ convention (that’s ‘guitar builders’ to us civilians) in Woodstock.

What Jay Cunningham captured with his battery powered video camera was what looks to be an impromptu acoustic jam featuring Vignola, backed by his sideman, and one Julian Lage.

As with Vignola earlier, I had no idea who Julian Lage was. I figured he was some obscure grinning Frenchman having a turn at the guitar at a trade show jam. I was wrong. Turns out he’s an American, and quite famous – having been an official child prodigy, who somehow, he reports, had a more or less normal upbringing.

If you don’t like guitar work, skip the video. If old standards bore the hell out of you, skip the video. If you have never played any kind of musical instrument, skip the video. You won’t have any idea how amazing what he is doing is, since you will have no context in which to locate it.

If, however you know anything about musicianship, take a look. There are many fine and highly talented musicians in the world. This, is a little different. You are watching real genius. Take note at the 2 minute mark.

And thanks to Jay Cunningham and his video camera with its dying battery, some of that genius, apparently spontaneously expressed before what seems to be a small, casually gathered audience of trade show attendees, was captured for posterity.

I have Dish Network.
It has Serius XM Satellite Radio. A whole lot of channels of music.

I turned my TV on to the Serius XM Satellite Radio “70s on 7” channel. Oh my, the memories! And the great music!

I could listen to all the great music from 1990 till now on my half hour lunch break, and still have time for quiet, peaceful reflection. Not so with the music coming out of the 1970s. I could spend my entire 12 hour shift listening to only the best of the 1970s and still miss out on massive amounts of great 70s music.

What qualifies as music in the post-modern world of today cannot hold a candle to even the mediocre music that came out of the 1970s.

Today is the day that eyes across the nation are looking at Texas. Who will they choose as their next US Senator? (The Democrat nominee will be a sacrificial lamb, with no chance of winning.) Will it be the TEA Party favorite Ted Cruz? Will it be the Establishment choice David Dewhurst? That will be decided later tonight.

If you want to know what the TEA Party is fighting for;
If you want to know what the Commonsense Constitutional Conservatives are fighting for;
If you want to know what Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Allen West, Mia Love, Ted Cruz, and a great many others are fighting for;
Then you’re about to find out.

Despite not being a “collector” type myself, a number of years ago I decided to make a collection of something that I thought would be both useful, and potentially one day, have some modest economic value or interest .

My notion, was not to make a “gun collection” in the usual sense of the word, but merely to obtain a representative selection of off the shelf, lever action rifles, of a bore suitable for big game on the order of deer and bear and possibly elk.

At the time there seemed to be an unusually broad selection of available models, some of which, the Winchester Model 1895 for example, had been reintroduced, after years of suspended production.

Other models, like the Savage Model 99 were rumored as destined for discontinuation. Minimal investment, maximal utility (for a hunter) and substantial technological interest from an historical point of view, made it all seem like a good idea.

I never followed through.

But the idea of relatively inexpensive collectible items, representing a particular or modest niche, is not an uncommon one it turns out. People do collect almost anything, and almost every child has the start of his own collecting hobby in his or her toy train or race car set, or barbie or other dolls, or comic books …

The problem with these kinds of items is that their value as a collectible depends in part on the fact that they are not treated as such from the start. If every comic book every kid bought was saved in a wrapper, if no ungrateful boy deliberately drove his train set off the ping pong table just to watch it crash over a “cliff”, then these things would be anything but rare. And while landfills would be considerably less full our dwellings would be considerably more so.

Grown-ups are aware of this process of natural and necessary attrition, and this realization may be part of what is behind parents or grandparents starting kids off with stamps, or pennies, or as my mother did with my much younger kid sisters, a series of expensive but probably now worthless American Something or Other dolls bestowed upon them every Christmas for years. That latter example kind of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise though. What’s the point of buying an expensive “collectible” when every example issued is stored away on a closet shelf for two decades in the wan hope that it will represent a small fortune someday?

Anyone want a set of Franklin Mint commemorative “coins”?

So if the average man is going to collect he might as well do so for pleasure. And adult people experience harmless fun in collecting all kinds of things – even obsolete business machines or manual typewriters, for example. There are of course the better known farm tractor collectors, and lawn mower collectors, and 1930’s dinnerware collectors.

I don’t know if there are collectors of those 8mm formatted films of 1930’s cartoons which were used to demonstrate home movie projectors to potential buyers in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but I would not be surprised if there were.

Now guitars are of course, are something that we would expect people to collect. The best of them are beautiful, functional, and in many cases economically valuable from the time of their creation; only to grow more so with time. Check out the going price of a 1954 Les Paul Gold Top, or a 1962 Fender Stratocaster in pristine condition if you need convincing.

But what about those “other” guitars? What about those economical, second-tier, private labeled, entry level player kinds which were advertised in the department store catalogs right up through the 1980s? Would anyone really want, say, a 1965 Danelectro?

People do collect these items with some obvious enthusiasm and even whimsical reverence.

And if you think about it, there are many worse hobbies, than that.

Here’s a fellow that put his interest in guitars to a good use. I don’t think he is playing an Harmony or a Kay, but I think he is doing rather well all the same even though I don’t care for this tune by and large. The old guy on the fiddle is someone famous from years ago. An Italian aristocrat who took up with some Belgian Gypsy guitar player and with whom he had some success before WWII.

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It isn’t often that Truth Before Dishonor does any Rule 5 blogging, but I accidentally found some videos that made me decide to do it. And oh, by the way, the fiddler, Linda, is mine. (She just doesn’t know it yet.)

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Music quit being produced, for the most part, after the 1980s. That goes without saying. So, when I think about various songs, then and before is where my mind travels. And I remembered a very beautiful love song, so I looked it up on YouTube.

Isn’t it interesting that something you remember as something absolutely beautiful actually has some rotten stench to it after you take the time to actually review it? Absolutely beautiful song — until you get to the rot-filled two-line twist, which completely changes the meaning of the entire song. Despite that, it’s a song that comes up in my mind from time to time.

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As 2011 comes to a close and 2012 comes roaring in, expectations for the new year are high, especially in the political arena. As the events of 2009 brought about a major awakening in America, causing the historic 2010 elections (over 700 previously Democrat-held seats flipped Republican), just so the events of 2011 portend to a continued return to Constitutional sanity in 2012 as the disaster that has been our experimentation with Socialism continues to be erased.

But on this day, December 31, my thoughts return to the same thoughts as every December 31 for the past 30 years, and to one single, haunting song:

From all of us at Truth Before Dishonor to all of you who read us, may your New Year be more blessed than the old one and may your family be blessed.